The total area of the Balkans is 666,700 square km (257,400 square miles) and the population is 59,297,000 (est. 2002).[2] The Balkans meets the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea on the south and southeast, and the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres (9,596 ft) on the Rila mountain range in Bulgaria.

In Antiquity, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian[7] name Haemus, as well as in the Middle Ages[8] and thus the Balkan Peninsula was the "Peninsula of Haemus". The Thracian king Haemus, who is likely only a fictitious character, in Greek mythologic fantastics was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. Apart, there are two equally acceptable theories for the etymology of the name Haemus, one claiming that the name of the mountain was derived apart from mythology, while the other one claiming vice-versa, the one of D. Dechev consider that Haemus (Αἷμος) is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, 'mountain ridge'.[9] The other possibility is that "Haemus" (Αἵμος) derives from the Greek word "haema" (αἵμα) meaning 'blood'. The myth goes about the fight of Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains from which they got their name.[10]

The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan.[11] The popularization of Balkan began with the arrival of the Ottomans who first mention it in a document dated from 1565.[12] There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, despite the fact that other Turkic tribes had already settled earlier or were passing through the Peninsula.[12] There exists also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholary assertion.[12] The word was used first by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊, but especially it was applied to the Haemus mountain.[13][14] In Turkish Balkan means "a chain of wooded mountains" (balkan),[15][16] while in Bulgarian language the word balkan (балкан) means "mountain".[17] Another possibility to its etymology is related to Persianbālk meaning "mud", and the Turkish suffix an, i.e. swampy forest.[18] The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary (Balkan Mountains)[19] and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna meaning big, high, house.

On a larger scale, the mountains are only one part of a long continuous chain crossing the region in the form of a reversed letter S, from the Carpathians south to the Balkan range proper, before marching away east into Turkey. The Balkan Mountains include the Stara Planina (Old Mountain) mountain range in Bulgaria and part of Serbia. On the west coast, an offshoot of the Dinaric Alps follows the coast south through Dalmatia and Albania, crosses Greece, and continues into the sea in the form of islands.

The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat.[20] English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808.[21] During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term."[22]

As time passed, the term gradually acquired political connotations far from its initial geographic meaning, arising from political changes from the late 19th-century to the creation of post–World War IYugoslavia (initially the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). Zeune's goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, due to oscillating political circumstances.

As of 1920 until World War II Italy included Istria and some Dalmatian areas (like Zara, known as Zadar) that are within the general definition of the Balkan peninsula. The current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste and Gorizia inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, due to a definition of the Balkans that limits its western border to the Kupa River.[50]

Some institutions[weasel words][citation needed] and member states of the European Union have defined the "Western Balkans" as the south-east European area that includes countries that are not members of the European Union, while others refer to the geographical aspects. The Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of "ex-Yugoslavia (minus Slovenia) and Albania".[53] Countries of the western Balkans are Croatia (now an EU member), Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania — or Albania plus the former Yugoslavia, minus Slovenia.[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] Each of these countries aims to join the EU and reach democracy and transmission scores but, until then, they will be strongly connected with the pre-EU waiting program CEFTA.[62]

Most of the area is covered by mountain ranges running from north-west to south-east. The main ranges are the Balkan mountains, running from the Black Sea Coast in Bulgaria to its border with Serbia, the Rhodope mountains in southern Bulgaria and northern Greece, the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro, the Šar massif which spreads from Albania to Macedonia, and the Pindus range, spanning from southern Albania into central Greece and the Albanian Alps. The highest mountain of the region is Rila in Bulgaria, with Musala at 2925 m, Mount Olympus in Greece, the throne of Zeus, being second at 2917 m and Vihren in Bulgaria being the third at 2914 m. The karst field or polje is a common feature of the landscape.

On the Adriatic and Aegean coasts the climate is Mediterranean, on the Black Sea coast the climate is humid subtropical and oceanic, and inland it is humid continental. In the northern part of the peninsula and on the mountains, winters are frosty and snowy, while summers are hot and dry. In the southern part winters are milder. The humid continental climate is predominant in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Croatia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, northern Montenegro, the interior of Albania, Romania and Serbia, while the other, less common climates, the humid subtropical and oceanic climates, are seen on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and Turkey; and the Mediterranean climate is seen on the coast of Albania, coast of Croatia, Greece, southern Montenegro and the Aegean coast of Turkey.

During the centuries many woods have been cut down and replaced with bush. In the southern part and on the coast there is evergreen vegetation. Inland there are woods typical of Central Europe (oak and beech, and in the mountains, spruce, fir and pine). The tree line in the mountains lies at the height of 1800–2300 m. The landscape provides habitats for numerous endemic species, including extraordinarily abundant insects and reptiles that serve as food for a variety of birds of prey and rare vultures.

The soils are generally poor, except on the plains where areas with natural grass, fertile soils and warm summers provide an opportunity for tillage. Elsewhere, land cultivation is mostly unsuccessful because of the mountains, hot summers and poor soils, although certain cultures such as olives and grapes flourish.

Resources of energy are scarce, except in the territory of Kosovo, where considerable coal, lead, zinc, chromium, silver deposits are located.[63] Other deposits of coal, especially in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia also exist. Lignite deposits are widespread in Greece. Petroleum is most notably present in Romania, although scarce reserves exist in Greece, Serbia and Albania. Natural gas deposits are scarce. Hydropower is in wide use, with over 1,000 dams. The often relentless bora wind is also being harnessed for power generation.

Metal ores are more usual than other raw materials. Iron ore is rare but in some countries there is a considerable amount of copper, zinc, tin, chromite, manganese, magnesite and bauxite. Some metals are exported.

The time zones are situated as follows:

Territories in the time zone of UTC+01:00: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia

Territories in the time zone of UTC+02:00: Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey

The Balkan region was the first area of Europe to experience the arrival of farming cultures in the Neolithic era. The practices of growing grain and raising livestock arrived in the Balkans from the Fertile Crescent by way of Anatolia and spread west and north into Pannonia and Central Europe. Two early culture-complexes have developed in the region, Starčevo culture and Vinča culture. Vinča culture developed a form of proto-writing before the Sumerians and Minoans, known as the Old European script, while the bulk of the symbols had been created in the period between 4500 and 4000 BC, with the ones on the Tărtăria clay tablets even dating back to around 5300 BC.[6]

The identity of the Balkans is dominated by its geographical position; historically the area was known as a crossroads of cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire,[citation needed] the destination of a massive influx of pagan Bulgars and Slavs, an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met,[64] as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.

Hagia Sophia, an Eastern Orthodox cathedral built in the 6th-century in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey), later an imperial mosque, and now a museum.

In the past several centuries, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic), the Balkans has been the least developed part of Europe. According to Suraiya Faroqhi and Donald Quataert, "The population of the Balkans, according to one estimate, fell from a high of 8 million in the late 16th-century to only 3 million by the mid-eighteenth. This estimate is in harmony with the first findings based on Ottoman documentary evidence."[69]

Most of the Balkan nation-states emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries as they gained independence from the Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian empire (Greece in 1821, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania in 1878, Bulgaria in 1908, Albania in 1912).

In 1912–1913 the First Balkan War broke out when the nation-states of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro united in an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the war, almost all remaining European territories of the Ottoman Empire were captured and partitioned among the allies. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albanian state. Bulgaria insisted on its status quo territorial integrity, divided and shared by the Great Powers next to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) in other boundaries and on the pre-war Bulgarian-Serbian agreement. Provoked by the backstage deals between its former allies Serbia and Greece on allocation the spoils at the end of the First Balkan War, while it fights at the main Thracian Front, Bulgaria marks the beginning of Second Balkan War when attacked them. The Serbs and the Greeks repulse single attacks, but when the Greek army invaded Bulgaria together with an unprovoked Romanian intervention in the back, regardless of the single won battles, Bulgaria collapsed. The Ottoman Empire also used the opportunity to recapture Eastern Thrace, establishing its new western borders that still stand today.

The First World War was sparked in the Balkans in 1914 when members of Mlada Bosna, a revolutionary organization with predominately Serbian and pro-Yugoslav members, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital, Sarajevo. That caused a war between the two countries which—through the existing chains of alliances—led to the First World War. The Ottoman Empire soon joined the Central Powers becoming one of the three empires participating in that alliance. The next year Bulgaria joined the Central Powers attacking Serbia, which was successfully fighting Austro-Hungary to the north for a year. That led to Serbia's defeat and the intervention of the Entente in the Balkans which sent an expeditionary force to establish a new front, the third one of that war, which soon also became static. The participation of Greece in the war three years later, in 1918, on the part of the Entente finally altered the balance between the opponents leading to the collapse of the common German-Bulgarian front there, which caused the exit of Bulgaria from the war, and in turn the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending the First World War.[70]

With the start of the Second World War all Balkan countries, with the exception of Greece, were allies of Nazi Germany, having bilateral military agreements or being part of the Axis Pact. Fascist Italy expanded the war in the Balkans by using its protectorate Albania to invade Greece. After repelling the attack, the Greeks counterattacked, invading Italy-held Albania and causing Nazi Germany's intervention in the Balkans to help its ally.[71] Days before the German invasion a successful coup d'état in Belgrade by neutral military personnel seized power.[72]

Although the new government reaffirmed Serbia's intentions to fulfill its obligations as member of the Axis,[73] Germany, using its other two allied countries in the region, Bulgaria and Hungary, invaded both Greece and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia immediately disintegrated when those loyal to the Serbian King and the Croatian units mutinied.[74] Greece resisted, but, after two months of fighting, collapsed and was occupied. The two countries were partitioned between the three Axis allies, Bulgaria, Germany and Italy, and the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Italy and Germany.

During the occupation the population suffered considerable hardship due to repression and starvation, to which the population reacted by creating a mass resistance movement.[75] Together with the early and extremely heavy winter of that year (which caused hundreds of thousands deaths among the poorly fed population), the German invasion had disastrous effects in the timetable of the planned invasion in Russia causing a significant delay,[76] which had major consequences during the course of the war.[77]

Finally, at the end of 1944, the Soviets entered Romania and Bulgaria forcing the Germans out of the Balkans. They left behind a region largely ruined as a result of wartime exploitation, but by making use of the post-war separation of Germany into two independent entities, the German states successfully and legally avoided paying any reparations or repaying the forced loans given by the occupied countries.

During the Cold War, most of the countries on the Balkans were governed by communist governments. Greece became the first battleground of the emerging Cold War. The Truman Doctrine was the US response to the civil war, which raged from 1944 to 1949. This civil war, unleashed by the Communist Party of Greece, backed by communist volunteers from neighboring countries (Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia), led to massive American assistance for the non-communist Greek government. With this backing, Greece managed to defeat the partisans and, ultimately, remained the only non-communist country in the region.

However, despite being under communist governments, Yugoslavia (1948) and Albania (1961) fell out with the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), first propped up then rejected the idea of merging with Bulgaria and instead sought closer relations with the West, later even spearheaded, together with India and Egypt the Non-Aligned Movement. Albania on the other hand gravitated toward Communist China, later adopting an isolationist position.

In the 1990s, the transition of the regions' ex-Soviet bloc countries towards democratic free-market societies went peacefully with the exception of Yugoslavia. Wars between the former Yugoslav republics broke out after Slovenia and Croatia held free elections and their people voted for independence on their respective countries' referenda. Serbia in turn declared the dissolution of the union as unconstitutional and the Yugoslavian army unsuccessfully tried to maintain status quo. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, followed by the Ten-Day War in Slovenia. Till October 1991, the Army withdrew from Slovenia, and in Croatia, the Croatian War of Independence would continue until 1995. In the ensuing 10 years armed confrontation, gradually all the other Republics declared independence, with Bosnia being the most affected by the fighting. The long lasting wars resulted in a United Nations intervention and NATO ground and air forces took action against Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

With the dissolution of Yugoslavia an issue emerged over the name under which the former (federated) republic of Macedonia would internationally be recognized, between the new country and Greece. Being the Macedonian part of Yugoslavia (see Vardar Macedonia), the federated Republic under the Yugoslav identity had the name Republic of Macedonia on which it declared its sovereignty in 1991. Greece, having a large region (see Macedonia) also under the same name opposed to the usage of this name as an indication of a nationality. The issue is currently under negotiations after a UN initiation.

Balkan countries control the direct land routes between Western Europe and South West Asia (Asia Minor and the Middle East). Since 2000, all Balkan countries are friendly towards the EU and the USA.[citation needed]

View from Santorini in Greece. Tourism is an important part of the Greek economy.

Drvengrad (also known as Mećavnik or Küstendorf), an ethno village in Serbia and home to the annual Kusturica film festival

Currently all of the states are republics, but until World War II all except Turkey were monarchies. Most of the republics are parliamentary, excluding Romania and Bosnia which are semi-presidential. All the states have openmarket economies, most of which are in the upper-middle income range ($4,000 – $12,000 p.c.), however, Greece has high income economies (over $12,000 p.c.), and is also classified with very high HDI in contrast to the remaining states which are classified with high HDI. The states from the former Eastern Bloc that formerly had planned economy system and Turkey mark gradual economic growth each year, only the economy of Greece drops for 2012 and meanwhile it was expected to grow in 2013. The Gross domestic product (Purchasing power parity) per capita is highest in Greece (over $25), followed by Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia ($10 – $15), Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo (below $10).[80] The Gini coefficient, which indicates the level of difference by monetary welfare of the layers, is on the second level at the highest monetary equality in Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia, on the third level in Greece, Montenegro and Romania, on the fourth level in Macedonia, on the fifth level in Turkey, and the most unequal by Gini coefficient is Bosnia at the eighth level which is the penultimate level and one of the highest in the world. The unemployment is lowest in Romania (below 10%), followed by Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania (10 – 15%), Greece (15 – 20%), Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia (20 – 30%), Macedonia (over 30%) and Kosovo (over 40%).

On political, social and economic criteria the divisions are as follows:

The islands are not taken into account. Both census figures of Serbia and Kosovo in the table do not include North Kosovo, therefore in the population of the Balkans, made up of sum of the populations in the table, is added separately an additional number of 70,000 to include the missing population of North Kosovo.

The region's principal religions are Christianity (Eastern Orthodox, Catholic) and Islam (Sunni).[3] Eastern Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both the Balkan peninsula and the Balkan region. A variety of different traditions of each faith are practiced, with each of the Eastern Orthodox countries having its own national church.

Territories in which the principal religion is Eastern Orthodoxy (with national churches in parentheses):

The Jewish communities of the Balkans were some of the oldest in Europe and date back to ancient times. These communities were Sephardi Jews, except in Romania where the Jewish communities were Ashkenazi Jews. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the small and close-knit Jewish community is 90% Sephardic, and Ladino is still spoken among the elderly. The Sephardi Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo has tombstones of a unique shape and inscribed in ancient Ladino.[92] Sephardi Jews used to have a large presence in the city of Thessaloniki, and by 1900, some 80,000, or more than half of the population, were Jews.[93] The Jewish communities in the Balkans suffered immensely during World War II, and the vast majority were killed during the Holocaust. An exception were the Bulgarian Jews, most of whom were saved by Boris III of Bulgaria, who resisted Adolf Hitler, opposing their deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Almost all of the few survivors have emigrated to the (then) newly founded state of Israel and elsewhere. No Balkan country today has a significant Jewish minority.

Most of the states in the Balkans are predominantly urbanized; the countries in which the rural population is the majority are Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo each being about 50% rural and 50% urban.[94]

^ abc"Balkans". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2015-05-03. The Balkans are usually characterized as comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia—with all or part of each of those countries located within the peninsula. Portions of Greece and Turkey are also located within the geographic region generally defined as the Balkan Peninsula, and many descriptions of the Balkans include those countries too. Some define the region in cultural and historical terms and others geographically, though there are even different interpretations among historians and geographers.... Pop. (2002 est.) 59,297,000.

^"Turkey: Registered Population". List of the registered population by cities and provinces in the years 2010 and 2007, quoted from the State Institute of Statistics of the Republic of Turkey. City Population DE. 2010.

Dvornik, Francis. The Slavs in European History and Civilization Rutgers University Press, 1962.

Fine, John V. A., Jr.The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century [1983]; The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, [1987].